Comment by KozmoNau7

I can only speak from my own experience, but I know a couple of my friends have had very similar experiences getting into music.

My parents have always been musically inclined, my dad played drums in a rock band and my mom played the flute and sang. There was also always a lot of music in our home, I got my introduction to rock music via Deep Purple's Machine Head on cassette tape, which my parents bought in the 70s and gave to me in the early 90s. I still have it, along with Sgt. Pepper's and Dødens Triumf by The Savage Rose. Absolute classics that helped shape my taste in music.

So there was always rock music nearby as I grew up, and I think specifically Jon Lord on hammond organ through a distorting guitar amp (the intro to "Lazy" is so damn good) is what opened my ears to heavier distortion and the enveloping sound it creates. And of course Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath. I also discovered Motörhead around this time, and started to love the raw punk-influenced edge to their sound, compared to Deep Purple's more polished compositions, which also took me in the direction of over-the-top dragons and swords power metal.

From there, I was introduced to progressive death metal in the form of Opeth, thanks to an open FTP at a LAN party (I think piracy was and is hugely important in a lot of peoples' personal musical journeys). That got me used to growled vocals, and I slowly got into harder death metal, and branched out to brutal death metal and grindcore/deathgrind: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCsoB8p578Q

I've started branching out to more old school death metal now, wanted to catch up on what I missed in the 90s and early 2000s.

I guess I'm rambling. My point is that it's a musical journey of exposure and experience and learning about new bands and genres. I don't think very many people start out enjoying extreme metal, and I don't think it's a genetic ASMR thing.